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Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

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Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#61

Post by rickydroll »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #57
peteey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>electric bikes Its not safe to cycle for practical purposes in my city. The city make gestures like painting a few road shoulders green and nature trails for exercise. This does not get me to work, daycare, the dentist, etc. Generally in America, bikes are more of a novelty than transportation.

Ok. My comment wasn't even promoting e-bikes over electric cars. I have an electric car. I use it daily and use it to get me around more than my ebike. But if someone lives somewhere in the world off of a much tinier budget and they can use something like a bike/motorcycle/cart that is electric powered over a much dirtier gas engine, then that's something they should consider.

If you want to set transit folks' hair on fire, show how many E-bikes the government could buy for the cost of a transit project. Then, apply that number to the population that would be served by by that transit system.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#62

Post by K0balt »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #58
K0balt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m with you on the collective effect of small efforts, but it’s a difficult ask to motivate when one persons excess personal environmental contamination (say, through private jet ownership) offsets an entire nations efforts of using paper instead of plastic straws, for instance. It’s like everyone shares the pool, and everyone gets out and goes to the bathroom to defecate. But not this one guy, he “doesn’t have time…

But I'd argue two points here. First, the average American household spends approximately $5k a year on gasoline [0]. That's still quite a lot of gasoline burned up. Add to that another ~$1k of natural gas the average household is burning up every year. I don't really call that small consumption. On a worldwide scale, each of these American households is burning up way more fossil fuels than the bottom 50%+. THEY ARE…

Absolutely on heat pumps and EVs. At least in most areas.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#63

Post by newsclues »

llamaimperative wrote: post #44
newsclues wrote: post #16

This has been obvious for quite some time, and is a key criticism of the "climate deniers". The poor and middle class pay and suffer from climate change initiatives while the rich and powerful fly around on private jets to climate conferences. Clearly there is something going on here.

Can you explain the chain of reasoning from "rich people shouldn't be flying on private jets to climate conferences" to climate denialism? As a refresher, climate denialism "is rejection of the idea that changes in the Earth's climate or weather patterns are caused by human activity."

Wasteful use of private jets and air travel for climate change events (teleconferencing exists), if CO2 was an existential threat would they not cease ultra pollution travel for a few?

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#64

Post by llamaimperative »

newsclues wrote: post #63
llamaimperative wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the chain of reasoning from "rich people shouldn't be flying on private jets to climate conferences" to climate denialism? As a refresher, climate denialism "is rejection of the idea that changes in the Earth's climate or weather patterns are caused by human activity."

Wasteful use of private jets and air travel for climate change events (teleconferencing exists), if CO2 was an existential threat would they not cease ultra pollution travel for a few?

If overeating really made people obese, wouldn’t they just not overeat?

If drinking too much really gives people hangovers, wouldn’t they just never drink too much?

If going into debt made it harder for people to afford the things they want, wouldn’t they just never spend more than they have?

People’s hypocrisy and witting or unwitting opting into bad outcomes has quite literally zero bearing on whether the bad outcomes exist or not.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#65

Post by actionfromafar »

Yizahi wrote: post #55
actionfromafar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, I expected you to get to the point that concerted effort, legislation and better technology is the only thing which will lower carbon dioxide outputs. Instead I got fatalism. :-P

You can check CO2 level meter in the atmosphere over past half a century, to see that "concerted effort, legislation and better technology" not only did jack shit to the actual CO2 levels, but the rate of increase is also increasing last years (accelerating). Until governments start collectively implementing policies which actually contain or reduce climate change, instead of greenwashing and shifting blame overseas,…

I think people only started to really believe in global warming the last 10 years. So I don't think there has been much effort so far. (Except as you point out, effort in greenwashing.)

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#66

Post by bluefirebrand »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #59
bluefirebrand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, basically this. No one should be expected to reduce how much they drive their car when there are people out there using personal jets to commute and mega yachts to vacation on Average people should not be asked to reduce their consumption so that rich people can continue getting away with their excess

But I'd argue two points here. First, the average American household spends approximately $5k a year on gasoline [0]. That's still quite a lot of gasoline burned up. Add to that another ~$1k of natural gas the average household is burning up every year. I don't really call that small consumption. On a worldwide scale, each of these American households is burning up way more fossil fuels than the bottom 50%+. THEY ARE…

> Just switch to superior electrified products (and support renewable electricity+batteries as appropriate)

"Just switch" as if that's an easy or affordable thing to do

I have to heat my house somehow, I'm not going to go cold during the winter to reduce how much carbon I use, and I can't afford to replace my gas heating with electric, replace all of the insulation and windows in my house to make heating more efficient, etc

If using less gas is a choice between "go broke" or "go cold", my choice is to use gas

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#67

Post by spoj »

This seems to be a study about people's misperception of carbon footprint of people in different income cohorts.

I scanned the paper and didn't find how it controls for the participants' misperception of income inequality to begin with. For example if the survey participants underestimated income inequality between cohorts, that might be the reason they underestimate carbon inequality - they just imagined the top 1% as more similar to other people!

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#68

Post by david-gpu »

rickydroll wrote: post #60
theluketaylor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a fan of revenue neutral carbon pricing that uses a standard dividend. Pricing externalities does seem like the only realistic way to solve tragedy of the commons issues like climate change. The weight of regulating individual actions would be impossibly complex. I also think pricing alone isn't sufficient since there are many poor people who can't really make different choices about their consumption even if th…

I'm largely in agreement with you but I think the payout from the carbon tax should be higher on the poor side of the spectrum and much lower on the wealthy side. Alternatively, one could use the carbon tax to feed a negative income tax.

The net effect of a carbon tax already very negative for the wealthy and positive for the working class. Perhaps you underestimate the carbon footprint of different folks -- precisely the subject of article under discussion.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#69

Post by blackfawn »

I'm not so sure one can say the ability increase your footprint due to wealth directly equates to a larger footprint... A bit of an anecdotal counterpoint: the few wealthy folks I know are almost hermits and typically relax at home while the rest of us have daily commutes and such. I've never known them to fly anywhere and basically "have everything they need" where they are. I'd be willing to bet their carbon footprint is much much lower than most.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#70

Post by paulcole »

bottom999mottob wrote: post #40
paulcole wrote: post #2

Any time you spend thinking or breath you spend talking about someone else’s carbon footprint is a total fool’s errand. Nobody will ever change their carbon footprint because of what someone else tells them. There will always be someone worse than them who they can point to and say, “Well I’m not as bad as them so they should change. If people cared at all about this, they’d change their own behavior. And it’s fine t…

People are allowed to be outraged that Taylor Swift generates a larger carbon footprint than the average person... This is a pretty solipsistic point of view that acknowledges that we do indeed live in a society. Doesn't mean we can't try to do better in the face of impending doom.

> People are allowed to be outraged that Taylor Swift generates a larger carbon footprint than the average person

I mean, sure?

Same as it’s OK for Taylor Swift to be outraged that Jeff Bezos generates a larger carbon footprint than her. Or same as it’s OK for me to be outraged that you generate a larger carbon footprint than me.

What good does the outrage do besides help each person ignore the fact that theyre the problem?

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